After a brief and well-deserved New Year's break, the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles are back in action tonight at C200 against their historical rival, the Halifax Mooseheads. Cape Breton enters the game with a record of 9-1-1 in their last eleven games, as well a 26-12-2 record overall, and looks to remain hot tonight in their first game of the year 2007.
The Eagles should enter tonight's game with pretty much the same lineup that earned them a 5-2 win over the PEI Rocket in their final game of 2006, with the only real question mark being whether or not third line right winger Brad Gallant will be back after sitting out the last game with some damage to his hand. Defenceman Charlie Pens remains out indefinitely with what looks to have been a concussion after being nailed by Brad's brother Brett Gallant of the Saint John Sea Dogs back on December 28. David Davenport should once again start in goal.
From the other side of the ice, the Halifax Mooseheads are a different squad than the one the Eagles faced six times in the first half, splitting the games 3-3. Halifax has made a number of trades over the past couple of weeks. To summarize...........
Out: Forwards Justin Saulnier and Kirk Forrest, defencemen Luciano Lommano and Philippe Poirier, and goaltender Jeremy Duchesne.
In: Forward Peter-James Corsi, defencemen Stephen Lund and Guillaume Monast, goaltender Mark Yetman.
The most significant of those roster moves is the departure of star goaltender Duchesne to the Val d'or Foreurs. This leaves career backup Roger Kennedy as the new #1 in Moose Country, and I expect him to start tonight. Lund and Monast add depth to the Moosehead defensive corps, which was that team's glaring weakness in the first half of the season. Corsi is a talented player who wasn't fitting in in Val d'or and so far seems to have been rejeuvenated a bit in Halifax.
Cape Breton will counter with the same effective units they have been using of late. A powerful scoring line of Ouellet-Fergus-McIlveen, a versatile two-way line of Culligan-Sheppard-Brannon, a gritty shutdown line of B MacDonald-Slaney-Gallant (or Quesnel if Gallant is unable to play), and a young energy unit composed of JC Gauthier, Nick MacNeil, and either Quesnel or a player like Mickey MacDonald/Stephen Ceccanese as a fourth line. Defensive pairings last game were JC Sawyer-Mark Barberio, Oskars Bartulis-Jason Swit, and Spencer Corcoran-Etienne Breton, with Daniel Fazzalari as the seventh D; they should be fairly similar tonight.
This lineup has been fairly constant all year, but with this being the last home game before the end of the Christmas trading period, tonight could be the last night that C200 fans see this lineup as is; the next time that the Eagles take to home ice, there could be a new face or two in the lineup, and there could be a player or two gone elsewhere.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, it is somewhat disappointing that the Eagles have only managed a split of the six games against the relatively weak Mooseheads so far this season. Therefore, a top performance is expected tonight from the Eagles. With the opposition tonight being a historic rival, and with some people still not having yet finished their holiday break, we could anticipate a decent crowd at the rink tonight, although certainly nothing like the packed house that watched last week's win over the Sea Dogs. To be quite blunt, most games between these two teams this year have been disappointingly dull affairs, with very little hatred or animosity of any kind. One staggering statistic is that there has been just one fight in the six meetings thus far. I for one really challenge the two teams to change all of this in tonight's game.
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In other news, goaltender Ondrej Pavelec and his Czech teammates were eliminated in the quarterfinals yesterday at the World Junior Championships, due to a 4-1 loss at the hands of Team Sweden. The loss ends what was somewhat of a disappointing tournament for Pavelec, and as Eagle fans, we have to hope that this does not damage too badly the confidence of our #1 goaltender. We all remember 2004, when goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury never really recovered from a World Junior disappointment, and come playoff time, was a shell of his true self. Let us hope that history does not repeat itself with Ondrej Pavelec. He needs to have a great second half here in Cape Breton and really get into a long-term groove for the first time this season. I am not totally sure at the moment when he will be back with the hockey club but it will certainly be posted in this blog the second that information is known.
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